French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac has been forced to resign after it was announced on Tuesday that a full-blown independent judicial investigation has been opened into evidence that he held an undisclosed bank account in Switzerland.
A statement issued by the French presidential office shortly after 6p.m. on Tuesday said President Hollande “has put an end to Jérôme Cahuzac’s functions, at his request”. Cahuzac is replaced as budget minister by Bernard Cazeneuve, until now European affairs minister, who in turn is replaced by Thierry Repentin.
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The move follows the results of a preliminary investigation, launched in January after a series of investigations by Mediapart (links to all articles can be found at the bottom of page 2) to establish whether evidence that Cahuzac was involved in 'laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud' justified a thorough judicial investigation.
Cahuzac, 60, who is also a plastic surgeon specialized in hair transplant operations, was appointed budget minister in the new socialist government that came to power in May 2012. Last November, he announced his ministry was launching a crackdown on tax fraud.
During his presidential election campaign, François Hollande said he wanted to establish an “exemplary Republic”. The news that a key minister now faced a full investigation into such serious allegations left Hollande and Cahuzac himself with no other option than the minister's departure.
Announcing the opening of a judicial investigation on Tuesday, Paris public prosecutor François Molins insisted upon the necessity to pursue the enquiry “in a more appropriate procedural framework, given the complexities of the investigations to be carried out, notably the thorough establishment of international [law enforcement] cooperation." This includes seeking the cooperation of the authorities in Switzerland where, according to compelling evidence, the account was held with the UBS bank in Geneva, and in Singapore, where information gained by Mediapart indicates he transferred any remaining assets after it was closed in 2010, shortly before he became president of the finance committee for the parliamentary lower house, the National Assembly, and two years before he became budget minister.
The announcement by the Paris prosecution authorities follows the authentication of a key tape recording on which Cahuzac is heard discussing his account at UBS in Geneva. While Cahuzac denied he was on the tape, police forensic experts based in Ecully, near the city of Lyon, have now concluded it was indeed his voice. Three key witnesses interviewed by police have also confirmed it was the politician who is heard speaking .
The conversation was recorded during a meeting with his wealth and investment advisor at the end of the year 2000. At the time, he was a socialist Member of Parliament for a constituency in the Lot-et-Garonne département (equivalent to a county) of south-west France. In the recording, he speaks of his embarrassment at having the account at UBS in Geneva.
“It pisses me off to have an account open there. UBS is not necessarily the most hidden of banks,” he is heard saying on the tape, which was revealed by Mediapart last December (click here for the sound track and transcripts). While Cahuzac has launched a lawsuit against Mediapart for defamation, he has taken no legal action against this website in relation to the status of the tape.
Cahuzac has publicly denied before parliament ever holding a bank account outside France. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the former budget minister said he had offered his resignation for the sake of “the proper functioning” of the government. "This changes nothing regarding either my innocence or the calumnious nature of the accusations made against me,” he added, “and it is to demonstrate this that I will as of now place all my energy.”
The appointment of an examining magistrate with full independent investigative powers will enable enquires into the affair to reach wider and further than has so far been the case. Already the authorities have suggested that funds in the Swiss bank account “may have come from pharmaceutical laboratories”.
In 1993, Cahuzac, a qualified surgeon, set up a consultancy firm called 'Cahuzac Conseil' that gave what he described as 'technical' advice to the French pharmaceutical industry. Previously, between 1988 and 1991, he had served as a senior member of staff for the then-health minister Claude Evin.
The investigation announced on Tuesday includes the additional opening of enquiries into the suspected receiving “by a member of a medical profession, of advantages from a company whose services or products are [refunded] by the social security [system]”.
The authorities also make clear that they had now made an official request, on March 12th, to the Swiss judicial authorities asking for their cooperation in the affair. In passing the prosecutors also refer to a request made at the end of January by the French tax authorities – whose ministerial boss was then Cahuzac - for their help in the matter. According to a French finance ministry source cited in February by the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, the response came within a week, a speed that surprised experts used to the workings of the Swiss tax authorities, and which was favourable to Cahuzac. However, according to a judicial source who spoke first to news agency Reuters then weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, the “Swiss information is open to interpretation”.
No journalist has seen the Swiss response. In its statement on Tuesday, the Paris public prosecutor's office made clear that any such response by the Swiss to the French tax authorities “simply only constitutes information in the framework of a criminal investigation”. Mediapart understands that the earlier move by the French finance ministry to contact its Swiss counterparts was seen as a clumsy attempt to hold up a judicial investigation.
At an informal breakfast meeting with the press on February 19th this year Cahuzac, whose personal and political roots are from south-west France where rugby is a popular sport, told journalists present that he was expecting to “take a crash tackle” (the word is 'caramel' in French, here used ironically). When asked what he meant by this, Cahuzac replied: “In rugby a 'caramel' is a blow you don't get up from.”
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See also:
The French budget minister and his secret Swiss bank account
French budget minister caught on tape discussing his secret Swiss account
Revealed: the man who handles the budget minister's own personal fortune
The budget minister and his Swiss bank account – the unanswered questions
Swiss bank account affair - the budget minister's lies
The French budget minister, the Swiss account and the judicial inertia that begs major reform
French budget minister and Swiss bank account affair: police open investigation
French fiscal authorities query budget minister's tax returns
French budget minister's tape recording about Swiss bank account genuine, say investigators
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English version by Michael Streeter and Graham Tearse